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Misperceptions

HenryFort said:
yes, it obviously should have read a car plummeted from off of a cliff
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Probably an editing mistake - the writer may have tried 'plummeted from a cliff' and 'plummeted off a cliff' and forgot to omit the extra word.
 
Coal said:
I'm fascinated by this stuff, but increasingly concerned that post hoc analysis is being treated as 'settled and exact science', when if fact it's not even close to that.
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Agreed ... I've had occasion to extensively use video recording and post hoc examination to analyze meetings and group decision processes in a research context. At one time or another I've conducted the examination / analysis phase using a variety of conversational / body language / proxemics / etc. approaches.

Each of these approaches focuses on one or another aspect of the subjects' actions and / or interactions. The eventual conclusions I reached from these experiences were:

(a) None of the touted analytical models / frameworks / etc. covered all aspects of the event being scrutinized;

(b) Each of these approaches typically surfaces or highlights interesting stuff (patterns; trends; connections; etc.);

(c) An analyst could be 'fooled' or 'faked out' by adhering too strictly to the tenets of a given framework to the exclusion of what was otherwise obvious from the recordings; and ...

(d) Individual subjects can (and often do ... ) exhibit behaviors, predilections, and / or constraints clearly motivated by personal or situational factors rather than whatever the model / framework would have you presume. (For example, visible discomfort / squirming / perspiration caused by a subject being ill that day rather than lying under great duress.)

I've come to see such approaches as being loosely akin to polygraphy - a narrowly-defined, technically coherent method that can admittedly indicate interesting things, but which is nowhere near as comprehensive nor as precise as its adherents would have you believe.

It's useful stuff, but don't lean too heavily on it ...
 
EnolaGaia said:
It's useful stuff, but don't lean too heavily on it ...
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That's the key thing, tendencies or possibles are all you can glean and context also maters. I think of it as a series of bell-curves that are combined to give a bell-curve of probability of deceit.

I just a read a paper that showed that verbal cues for lying are in fact more reliable that non-verbal and further, that many of the 'traditional measures' for deceit, i.e. avoiding eye contact, anxiety, over use of hand gestures etc, are in fact utterly unreliable.

That kind of dovetails with something I heard a long time ago about politicians being reluctant to appear on radio as verbal cues without the distraction of body language made it hard to conceal that which is not true.
 
Coal said:
That's the key thing, tendencies or possibles are all you can glean and context also maters. I think of it as a series of bell-curves that are combined to give a bell-curve of probability of deceit.
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Agreed ...

Coal said:
I just a read a paper that showed that verbal cues for lying are in fact more reliable that non-verbal and further, that many of the 'traditional measures' for deceit, i.e. avoiding eye contact, anxiety, over use of hand gestures etc, are in fact utterly unreliable.
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Also agreed (about the 'traditional measures' bit) ... I'm not all that convinced verbal cues (at face value alone ... ) are any more reliable than non-verbal ones. My BS detector pegged out earlier this year when I read a paper claiming the use of phrases such as "Honestly" / "The truth of the matter ..." / "In all honesty ..." should be treated as indicators of deceit.

The eye contact and hand gestures bits are special problems for me. Because I wasn't diagnosed as legally blind until age 9, I never developed a natural propensity for eye contact during conversation. I talk as much with my hands as with my voice. Whenever I'm the interviewee in a serious context (e.g., being grilled by security / law enforcement professionals) I've had to train myself to deliberately maintain eye contact and minimize my usual all-over-the-place gesturing.
 
Coal said:
I just a read a paper that showed that verbal cues for lying are in fact more reliable that non-verbal and further, that many of the 'traditional measures' for deceit, i.e. avoiding eye contact, anxiety, over use of hand gestures etc, are in fact utterly unreliable.
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i did quite a bit of media a few years ago on a matter, one or two of you may remember ... not being media savvy i learnt trial and error ... after a bunch of traditional tv camera interviews i took part in a live streamed-to-web crimestoppers event, brand new first time ever kind of thing ... and proceeded to look everywhere except into the web camera, which for social media of this kind was obviously where i shouldve been looking ... i mustve appeared guity as all hell ... i still cringe thinking about it and the potential for this to have set back the investigation rather than progress ...
 
EnolaGaia said:
Agreed ...

Also agreed (about the 'traditional measures' bit) ... I'm not all that convinced verbal cues (at face value alone ... ) are any more reliable than non-verbal ones. My BS detector pegged out earlier this year when I read a paper claiming the use of phrases such as "Honestly" / "The truth of the matter ..." / "In all honesty ..." should be treated as indicators of deceit.
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I was told (when in field sales a long time ago), that to use the phrase "If I'm honest" immediately suggests other previous statements are not. Whatever the truth of this, I've long since trained myself to use the word 'direct' or 'frank' in this context.

The paper I read that put it most convincingly is this one.

Strong, but Wrong: Lay People’s and Police Officers’ Beliefs about Verbal and Nonverbal Cues to Deception

Glynis Bogaard, Ewout H. Meijer, Aldert Vrij, Harald Merckelbach.

This is open access so google scholar will find it in a trice.

EnolaGaia said:
The eye contact and hand gestures bits are special problems for me. Because I wasn't diagnosed as legally blind until age 9, I never developed a natural propensity for eye contact during conversation. I talk as much with my hands as with my voice. Whenever I'm the interviewee in a serious context (e.g., being grilled by security / law enforcement professionals) I've had to train myself to deliberately maintain eye contact and minimize my usual all-over-the-place gesturing.
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That kind of underlines the point on the non-verbal gesture being of little to no value is assessing truthfulness, as in your context (for example) they don't indicate deceit in any way. Equally someone who is nervous when questioned by the police, might just be frightened of the police, so it doesn't indicate deceit. Someone who's parent insisted on making eye-contact and giving firm handshakes, will make eye contact and have a firm handshake, but still be a lying git...
 
Coal said:
I was told (when in field sales a long time ago), that to use the phrase "If I'm honest" immediately suggests other previous statements are not. Whatever the truth of this, I've long since trained myself to use the word 'direct' or 'frank' in this context. ...
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For such situations in which my own honesty might be at issue for the listener I've trained myself to avoid using phrases that refer to me as speaker and prioritize phrases that instead direct attention to the subject matter being discussed. Examples include: "In point of fact"; "the fact(s) of the matter"; "If you consider X"; etc.

Such re-phrasings have the additional benefits of (a) projecting an illocutionary force that 'pushes back toward' the listener / interviewer, and (b) giving the impression you're wholly focused on the topic and foregrounding the semantics (while diverting attention away from the situational pragmatics).
 
Coal said:
...That kind of underlines the point on the non-verbal gesture being of little to no value is assessing truthfulness, as in your context (for example) they don't indicate deceit in any way. Equally someone who is nervous when questioned by the police, might just be frightened of the police, so it doesn't indicate deceit. Someone who's parent insisted on making eye-contact and giving firm handshakes, will make eye contact and have a firm handshake, but still be a lying git...
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These things can be of value, but if and only if the interviewer has a sufficient contextual baseline from which to judge their connotations / implications with respect to the particular 'other' (interviewee, etc.).

None of these sorts of cues necessarily imply the same thing for all speakers in all situations.
 
EnolaGaia said:
For such situations in which my own honesty might be at issue for the listener I've trained myself to avoid using phrases that refer to me as speaker and prioritize phrases that instead direct attention to the subject matter being discussed. Examples include: "In point of fact"; "the fact(s) of the matter"; "If you consider X"; etc.

Such re-phrasings have the additional benefits of (a) projecting an illocutionary force that 'pushes back toward' the listener / interviewer, and (b) giving the impression you're wholly focused on the topic and foregrounding the semantics (while diverting attention away from the situational pragmatics).
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In contrast, I've trained myself to check the starting point for any train of reasoning and the moment someone says 'In point of fact...' I'll challenge the speaker to set out and verify the facts, usually politely. Those phrases you list as exemplars are are on my 'warning sign' list. :p

If a chain of reasoning has a weak point it's usually in the first one or two steps.

Woe betide anyone who seeks to persuade me with any phrase along the lines of "I think we can all agree that..." :cool:

EnolaGaia said:
These things can be of value, but if and only if the interviewer has a sufficient contextual baseline from which to judge their connotations / implications with respect to the particular 'other' (interviewee, etc.).

None of these sorts of cues necessarily imply the same thing for all speakers in all situations.
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That's pretty much what the literature says, but I was surprised to find that verbal cues are more reliable than noon-verbal in indicating deceit (at least in western English speaking testing).
 
I saw people building an Alberto Giacometti statue on a roof in Rotterdam. When I came closer I saw it was a speaker system. Even so a nice surreal moment.
giacommetti.jpg
 
I was sitting on the west side of a house in Miami Florida (near Homestead Airforce Base) when there were suddenly what appeared to be 6 jets with eerie lights come in over the house toward the west. Only problem was that they were doing about mach 12. Just before they disappeared I identified a wing beat. They were just sea gulls at a much lower altitude.

I've seen this same effect since and it's always very late dusk as the last rays of the sun are bouncing twice to get to the bird.
If you don't have much information it's easy to misidentify or misperceive.
 
Once when I was younger and visiting my parents I thought I saw a neighbour going by in his truck so I waved.
It wasn't and the chap circled back and followed me until I scuttled back into my parents' house.
I got glasses not long after that.
 
I have a few of these.

For my Eighteenth birthday my parents and I went away for the weekend, the hotel was near Pendle Hill in Lancashire and it was October so I was already a little bit spooked. I woke up in the middle of the night to see what I thought was a giant looming over the end of the bed. I didn't call my mum and dad as I wanted to seem mature and eventually went back to sleep. In the morning, the giant turned out to be a balloon which my mum had tied to a chair the night before and somehow I hadn't noticed it.

I once saw a card which read 'Get Well Stoned' that's a bit edgy, I thought until I realised it said 'get well soon.'

When I had a friend stay over recently, he asked why there always seemed to be people clapping outside the window. It was actually the pigeons flapping their wings.

I'm not sure about mentioning this last one. Many years ago when I was still with my ex I woke in the middle of the night as the house seemed to be shaking. I thought it may have been my housemate slamming the door heavily so dismissed it and went back to sleep.
There'd actually been an earthquake in the night and that's what I'd felt. I mentioned to ex that I'd felt the house shake at that time and how I thought it was our housemate slamming the door in a mood. 'Oh' says my ex, 'I felt that too, but I thought it was housemate having a vigorous wank.'
Poor housemate. I think it does demonstrate quite well the difference between my ex and I.
 
Jepra Peld said:
...I'd felt the house shake at that time and how I thought it was our housemate slamming the door in a mood. 'Oh' says my ex, 'I felt that too, but I thought it was housemate having a vigorous wank.'
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Steve: You're choking the chicken.
Patrick: You're strangling the python.
Jeff: “You're shaking the caravan, Jeffrey!” (cue stares) Sorry, it got away from me a bit there. Family holidays, eh? God they went on a bit, didn't they?

Coupling

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Steve: You're choking the chicken.
Patrick: You're strangling the python.
Jeff: “You're shaking the caravan, Jeffrey!” (cue stares) Sorry, it got away from me a bit there. Family holidays, eh? God they went on a bit, didn't they?

Coupling

maximus otter
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Ex was a big fan of Coupling, so that's probably what he was thinking of.
 
My subconscious thought of Marcel Duchamp, so I read Bride instead of Bridge and had some very surreal pictures in my head:

The Bridge experienced technical issues this afternoon and was locked in a raised position for a period of time. It has now reopened. Thanks to all those who fixed it
 
I woke up this morning to giant fingers at the top of my duvet and I thought I was about to be plucked up. I was very relieved when I realised that my duvet cover, which is pink fleshy colour, had somehow got folded in such a way it resembled a large hand.
 
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